FACEIT is reporting record breaking viewing figures for the FACEIT London Major. The Grand Finals on Sunday drew over one million concurrent viewers who tuned in to watch Astralis claim the CS:GO prize. The company reports that the event ranks as the third highest viewed esports tournament of all time, behind only Dota 2’s The International 2018 and League of Legends World Championship 2017, excluding Chinese viewership. The event drew more than 57 million views on Twitch, with a total of 61 million hours watched and established the FACEIT TV Twitch account as officially the fastest growing account earlier this month. The Major was broadcast across over a dozen platforms in over 15 territories and saw Sky Sports broadcast competitive CS:GO for the first time.

COMPETITION and VENUES

Riot unveiled the lineup for the 2018 League of Legends World Championship with the Play-in Stage set to begin on Oct. 1 from Seoul beginning with Edward Gaming/Infinity Esports/ Bahcesehir SuperMassive/G2 Esports/Dire Wolves and Ascension Gaming in action. The play-in stage will be streamed on Riot Games’ official Twitch channel, in addition to their official esports YouTube channel.

The world’s largest and most successful college athletic recruiting network, Next College Student Athlete is officially entering esports, marking the 34th sport in NCSA’s recruiting network. NCSA now serves as the official recruiting partner of the National Association of Collegiate Esports. “Recruiting for esports has become just as competitive as recruiting for any other collegiate sport,” said NACE Director Michael Brooks. NCSA will support all 14 collegiate-supported esports games, including League of Legends and Overwatch. As part of the NCSA recruiting network, esports student-athletes will be able to create free recruiting profiles and have access NCSA’s lineup network of college coaches. Additionally, collegiate esports coaches from NACE institutions can create a free account to search NCSA’s growing database of esports athletes.

Amazon announced GameOn Masters: Gear.Club 2018 featuring Pagani, a new competitive gaming event that will showcase racing title Gear.Club from Millennial eSports’ Eden Games. Amazon GameOn will power the tournament’s public qualifiers, which begin in-game on Sept. 27, as well as the finals, which will take place on Nov. 11 at the PokerGo Studio in the ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. “We’re extremely excited about GameOn Masters: Gear.Club 2018 featuring Pagani,” says David Nadal, CEO of Eden Games. “Nothing brings a gaming community together like competitive play, and with the help of Amazon’s GameOn, players from across the globe can compete for a spot in the tournament and connect through competitive play.”

The German Football League is reportedly looking to launch a tournament for clubs in both the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2. Play will see teams from the two tiers of the German football league compete in FIFA, anchored with the support of game publisher EA Sports, according to Esports Insider. Currently, 11 German clubs have signed players to represent them in esports.

Capcom unlocked details for the official Street Fighter League in Japan. Based on the Street Fighter V Arcade Edition, competition will begin in 2019 with three-on-three team battles. Six teams will be formed from a mix of unlicensed competitors and those licensed by the Japanese eSports Union

Last call! Don’t miss the Esports Business Summit next week, complete with networking fields trips, our 2018 Harvest Celebrity Charity Stream to benefit Gamers Outreach, and now Sunday will see the Esports Charity Poker Game, presented by ESP Gaming and open for attendees only! Play against your fellow esports executives at The PokerGO Studio at Aria, with commentary from World Series of Poker on-camera talent and analyst. Sign up by clicking here. If you aren’t registered for the Summit, get your tickets NOW.

Tencent Games and PUBG Corp. unveiled PUBG Mobile Star Challenge, a new tournament that will feature teams from six regions competing for a $600K prize pool. Teams will represent Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Japan/Korea, and China with the event sponsored by Samsung Galaxy Note9. Finals will take place in Dubai at the end of this year. Meanwhile, the first stop of the global tournament circuit will be the European region final in Kiev from Sept. 29-30. Players will be made up of celebrities, professional gamers, and internet personalities.

The rivalry between Northern and Southern California reaches new heights as the Los Angeles Valiant and San Francisco Shock announce the formation of the California Cup. The official home-and-home Overwatch League off-season event showcase begins on October 20 at the Esports Arena Santa Ana and finalizes on November 10 at the Esports Arena Oakland. Both locations will feature a meet-and-greet with the new-look Shock and Valiant rosters, amateur and collegiate Overwatch tournaments, exclusive merchandise, free-to-play computers and more. Each event will culminate in a match between the Valiant and Shock to determine the guardian of the California Cup.

Formula 1 charted the course for the F1 Esports Pro Series 2018, presented by New Balance, where the official F1 Esports teams will rev up to be named this year’s F1 Esports Series Teams’ and Drivers’ World Champions on Codemasters’ F1 2018 videogame. The Pro Series will be held as a series of three live events at London’s Gfinity Esports Arena on Oct. 10, Oct. 31 with the Grand Finale spanning Nov. 16-17. Events will be streamed live on Facebook and broadcast globally on selected TV networks, bringing the excitement and exhilaration of Formula 1 to a new generation of fans across the globe.

Gfinity and Ove Arup & Partners entered a partnership to design a “world-leading integrated esports facility,” combining their skills and resources to develop a blueprint for a scalable, specialist playing, watching, training, learning and broadcast venue. “We are delighted to be working with Arup to design the world’s most advanced integrated esports facility,” said Garry Cook, Executive Chairman, Gfinity. “The esports professional and aspiring amateur learning their craft have similar needs to their counterparts in a host of other sports. Environments that optimize their ability to play and train to their highest potential is the difference between winning and losing.”

INSIGHTS

Stream Hatchet’s access to cross platform data enables our users to make informed decisions in matching their content with streaming platforms. Our insights focus on the top 4 North American platforms over the month of August.

Twitch is the most influential platform in game streaming. 80% of the combined platform hours watched were generated by Twitch viewers.

Although Facebook social media boasts an active user base of over 2 billion, it’s gaming platform lags behind competitors. Less than 1% of the unique channels in our sample originated from FB.gg.

Of the top five games across all platforms, Playerunknown’s: Battlegrounds generated the most even spread. Twitch accounted for only 68% of the total hours watched, whereas YTG (25%), Mixer (3%), and Facebook (4%) generated more even percentages.

Come celebrate the latest and greatest in esports from over the last 12 months as we recognize over 60 frontrunners from across the esports ecosystem. Network with some of the industry’s elite over cocktails, dinner and at our after party—all while being inspired by the work our honorees produced. View finalists here.

NBA 2K League squad Magic Gaming tied up a new deal with Boxed Water to become the official water of the team and Magic Gaming will be using Boxed Water instead of plastic water bottles in all facilities. “Magic Gaming is thrilled to announce this socially responsible partnership with Boxed Water,” said Director of Magic Gaming Ryan DeVos. “It’s important as an organization to find ways to grow our business, but to also do that in a responsible manner. We are excited to introduce this great concept to all of our fans while integrating them in innovative ways through our digital platforms.”

Digital trading card platform Epics set its sights on RFRSH Entertainment and the company’s upcoming CS:GO tournament, BLAST Pro Series: Istanbul. The deal will produce a series of card packs and player cards be introduced into Epics’ library of collectibles.

FanAI SNAPSHOT

Last week FanAI looked at one method of running an esports marketing campaign, maximizing the reach by partnering with influencers from different gaming communities. This week FanAI looks at a different tactic, going all in on one influencer group to maximize repeat impressions. To investigate, FanAI looked at the overlap in follower groups of Fortnite’s top 30 influencers. More than 42% of the total audience follow at least 2 of the top influencers, with 28% following at least 3 players or streamers. Within Fortnite, the point of diminishing returns seems to fall around 3 or 4 influencers. However, for Fortnite there is a major outlier that should not be discounted, roughly 40% of the total audience only follow Tyler “Ninja” Blevins. Because these percentages will vary widely with differing game communities, this shows how critical it is to understand an audience before choosing where to spend your marketing budget.

PLATFORMS

Newzoo’s August Game Streaming Tracker looked at the Evolution Championship Series, aka EVO, running Aug. 2-5. The company reports that the event generated 5.2 million hours of viewership across Twitch and YouTube Gaming, up over the 4.2 million hours generated during last year’s edition. Evo’s official channels alone made up 65% (3.3 million hours watched) of Evo 2018’s watched hours. The most popular Evo 2018 tournament was its main event: the Street Fighter V tournament. It was viewed for a total of 1.7 million hours—49% more viewership than last year. The second-most popular was the tournament for 2002 Gamecube classic Super Smash Bros. Melee, which drew in 907K hours watched.

League of Legendsdeveloper Riot Games is launching a viewer rewards program for its esports programming that will begin with October’s World Championship. The initiative will see viewers earn in-game items through “Watch Missions,” which debuts on Sept. 30 and runs through Nov. 10. To participate, viewers will need to tune in to the World Championship through the official website and the Twitch and YouTube broadcasts.

Cheddar announced a new series titled Cheddar Sports. The weekly program will be dedicated to the latest and most significant news and events in esports going live on Twitch on Thursdays at 3:30p. As part of its coverage, Cheddar will also be livestreaming interviews and stories from a dedicated on-site location all day on October 27 during TwitchCon 2018 with Cheddar CEO and Founder Jon Steinberg anchoring the broadcast.

INDUSTRY

PlayStation is finally coming to the party, announcing that Fortnite on PS4 would be compatible for cross-platform gameplay, progression and commerce. To make the process of tracking all Fortnite progression and purchases easier, Epic Games will be implementing a new merging feature. Starting Nov., account merging will allow players to link their PSN, Xbox account and Nintendo Switch accounts to a single Epic Games account.

Telltale Games announced a studio closure that will see the vast majority of its staff – estimated to be around 225 people – with 25 employees remaining. Most projects in the pipeline have been cancelled, according to the story. Telltale’s CEO, Pate Hawley, wrote: “It’s been an incredibly difficult year for Telltale as we worked to set the company on a new course. Unfortunately, we ran out of time trying to get there. We released some of our best content this year and received a tremendous amount of positive feedback, but ultimately, that did not translate to sales. With a heavy heart, we watch our friends leave today to spread our brand of storytelling across the games industry.”

H1Z1 is getting an overhaul that will see the game renamed Z1 Battle Royale. Publisher Daybreak Games stated that H1Z1 is now under the umbrella of the “newly re-formed dev team.” Earlier this month, NantWorks announced a strategic investment in Daybreak Game Company that will see the company assume control and management of the game.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

YOU ASKED, WE DELIVERED.

Cynopsis created an esports news site to provide you with a comprehensive source & research tool for anyone in the esports and media community looking to stay one step ahead of this rapidly growing, multi-billion dollar industry.

Trivia: Two characters in the Mortal Kombat franchise, Raiden and Shang Tsung, each received design inspiration from this 1986 John Carpenter film about the adventures of Jack Burton and Wang Chi battling the ancient sorcerer David Lo Pan. What is the name of that movie? (Emailchris-sports@cynopsis.comwith your answer and be sure to include your name, company and city.)

Answer to Our Last Sports Trivia Question: This classic 1982 movie about the search for the Ark of the Covenant became the first licensed video game to be based on a film. What is the movie? Answer: Raiders of the Lost Ark. Kudos: Chris Davies-Virign/London; Rob Casalaina-ITN/NY; Luke Watson-Essential TV/NY; Danny Araque/NY; Scott Jenkins-Gracenote/NY; Allison Weiner – MMSI/Warwick; Matt Sautter-WideOrbit/Harrisburg; Glen Ross/DC: Brad Stern/Carbondale; Andy Pittman-TAMU/College Station; David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Federal Credit Union/Burbank; Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/LA

Related Stories

By Charlene Weisler Research and fraud: As Data Science is increasingly adopted in media companies, research departments, especially in those areas dedicated to quality research such as focus groups, are feeling the pinch. Not only can pure data focus attention and resources on real time reporting, the margin of error in its output can […]

CynopsisESPORTS It’s Thursday March 21, 2019 and this is your weekly early morning Esports briefing. For additional longer-form esports news plus jobs, a team directory, glossary, calendar and data, check out our new esports hub updated daily: http://cynopsisesports.com. N3rd Street Gamers is adding Overwatch to its National Championship Series of esports, […]

CynopsisSports Good morning. It’s Thursday March 21, 2019 and this is your first early morning Sports briefing. Danica Patrick is heading to NBC Sports, where the former INDYCAR and NASCAR driver will serve as a studio analyst for the company’s inaugural coverage of the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge on May 26 […]

Job of the Week COORD, RESEARCH & INSIGHTSEndemol Shine North AmericaNorth Hollywood Ideal candidate must have a strong interest in TV ratings & research and comfortable working with numbers/large data sets with a strong focus on accuracy & attention to detail. Must have 1+ yrs as an assist, coord or analytical role at TV studio, […]

Position Summary: The Manager, Corporate Research and Strategy is responsible for analyzing data and trends across media and developing key audience analysis across Discovery’s linear and non-linear platforms. The position will support the VP of Corporate research as well as the brand and ad sales research teams to share insights and resources to help elevate [...]

GSTV is looking for Account Director, Partnership Sales candidates with a demonstrated history of building strategic solutions for client partners while scaling revenue growth in national advertising markets. Our sales team manages and grows key relationships with brands and agencies while driving constant focus on partner solutions and results. We win when our partners grow [...]

The Day-to-Day Create awareness of CNN Airport Network marketing solutions among prospective clients and agencies (planning teams and digital-out-of-home and television buying groups). Identify territory prospects and needs as well as penetrate the highest levels within these companies. Develop and manage a diverse account list across key categories. Work collaboratively with cable (CNN/HLN/CNN Intl) and [...]